The Cook’s Tour

Flavours of Hong Kong: Handmade sauces, locally produced food and other artisanal delights:

Whether you are looking to learn more about a specific Hong Kong dish, or simply after some inspiration, or “cook’s tour” of Hong Kong food is for you–it’s 4 to 4.5 hours of tasting and immersion in the key ingredients of Cantonese cuisine. We visit both wet and dried food markets with strong emphasis on the handmade sauces, baked goods and homemade food and dessert ingredients and products .

We’ve followed this particular trail with both food enthusiasts and professionals, from a cookbook author to a master mixologist at a top London hotel bar! Better leave room in your suitcase for all the wonderful new flavourful ingredients you will want to take back to your kitchen.

We start with a stop at a 50 year old cafe for their homemade-on-premises bakery items–the best daan taat (egg tart) and bo lo baau (“pineapple” bun) in Hong Kong.

From here we head to tastings of 16 different handmade XO and other Chinese cooking sauces. We also will introduce you to one of the last remaining local small batch producers of handmade soy sauce in Hong Kong. Once you taste it, you will never go back to another brand, seriously!

Other highlights of our Hong Kong flavour treasure hunt:

• one of Hong Kong’s oldest makers of traditional preserved and salted sweets and dried fruits
• a traditional tasting in the back of a 50 year old tea importers–but this is not a “fancy” tea shop, but rather like a small trip back in time
• a handmade Cantonese cookie/biscuit bakery
• a family owned company that makes  beautiful handmade bamboo products for the kitchen in their storefront factory, including dim sum steamers of all sizes.
• the 50 year old shop that is considered the best place in Hong Kong to buy the flavour and umami-packed handmade lap cheung, dried sausage.